Wrapped In Secret
by Darkened Shadows
Summary: Post-"Greeks Bearing Gifts", Toshiko decides she needs new relationships and runs into Rhys during a pub crawl. Tosh/Rhys friendship, eventual Tosh/Owen romance
1. Forming Relationships

**Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or Torchwood or any characters therein. I'm just playing for a while.**

**Summary: After the debacle with Mary in "Greeks Bearing Gifts", Toshiko decides she needs to form healthy relationships outside of work. In her first attempt, she strikes a friendship with Rhys, Gwen's serious boyfriend. Eventual Tosh/Owen romance, Tosh/Rhys friendship.**

* * *

Toshiko looked at the remnants of the shattered pendant, her smile turning wry as Jack walked away. That man was always walking away, keeping himself separate. A part of her wished she'd kept the pendant intact. Maybe if she'd tried long enough, she could break through whatever barrier was inside her boss's head.

She shook her head and stood, gazing across the Plass. Ianto was finally leaving, having tended to everything inside. He managed to catch her gaze and nodded slightly before leaving entirely. She felt a surge of guilt now that she knew his nods and smiles were fake. Was there anything about him that was real? Did he give anything of himself?

She entertained the idea of slipping back into the Hub and curling into a ball on their ragged couch. That idea was tossed aside in disgust after a brief moment of thought. Once she thought the Hub to be the safest place in the world, somewhere she could run to escape the reality of everything that didn't originate with the Rift. Now, everything inside was just dirty and wrong.

Tosh finally let her thoughts go to Owen and Gwen. Gwen and Owen. She wasn't completely blind – she could see the signs from when he had been with Suzie. However, Suzie had been much more professional than Gwen, something that Tosh missed. Still, having confirmation in that kind of detail had been jarring.

After another long moment of staring into the distance, she decided to go to a nearby pub to mourn another bad day, another instance when her judgment was wrong. This pub was quiet enough that she felt comfortable, not unlike where she had met Mary. With its dark wood and the telly tuned to a match, it was obviously geared toward a masculine crowd. At least it wasn't a techno club, like the ones Owen would go to find a quick shag. Those places irked her in ways she couldn't quite explain.

She curled herself protectively around a pint and sipped at it delicately. An hour passed as she replayed everything that had happened over the past few days. Mary had used her, sure, but Tosh's feelings had been genuine. Owen had railed against her intrusion but she realized that he would poke and jibe and terrorize until others gave up pieces of themselves. She took comfort in this knowledge and slowly began to feel better.

The door opened and there was a burst of raucous laughter. It was a group of three men, probably in the midst of a private pub crawl. At the bar, they split, one to order drinks and the other two to find a booth. The one ordering drinks looked familiar, as if she'd seen him on grainy footage of CCTV, slightly overweight and joyous.

He stood next to her while he waited for their drinks. It took him a moment but he did notice her. "Hi there. I'm not in your way, am I?"

Tosh smiled demurely, the fringe of her hair falling over her face in the movement. "Not at all. Just nursing a pint."

The man looked at his friends and his face contorted strangely. Tosh figured he was having a silent conversation with them. It always amazed her how men could ask what would normally be a complex question with a half-smile and an arched eyebrow. After a moment, a grin blossomed across his face.

"Care to join us?"

Her smile broadened. "Only if I'm not a bother." Even though this recent debacle with Mary had hurt and would have otherwise caused her to be withdrawn, the relationship between Gwen and Owen had slid home how she really needed to have friends outside of work.

"Not at all." The bartender had finally returned with his drinks, so the man grabbed hers as well. "I'm Rhys, by the way. Rhys Williams."

Toshiko bit back a gasp and felt her smile crack. "Toshiko Sato. You can call me Tosh."

He nodded. "These are the guys, Thomas and Colin." He pointed to them respectively, a blond man on the left and a redheaded man next to him.

Colin chuckled a little loudly. "We're not all. Andy's coming."

In response, both Thomas and Rhys groaned. "Why'd you invite him? He hates me."

Tosh sat down in the booth next to Rhys. She could flow with the conversation, maybe. "Why's that?"

She heard the door open again and Colin pointed. "There he is."

She turned to look and saw a man at the door, scanning the room for them. He was thinner than the others and held himself like a constable. Rhys whispered in her ear when she turned back. "He fancies himself in love with my girlfriend."

Tosh brightened considerably. After the pendant, she found herself hating lies. Maybe she could lead into this without seeming like she'd been intentionally lying. "Oh? Your girlfriend?"

"Yeah. Gwen Cooper." He had a dreamy look on his face, though she felt it was probably tempered a bit by the fact that he wasn't with Gwen.

She sighed. That was what real love looked like, not the infatuation she'd been floating on. "Gwen? Really? I work with her."

Rhys eyed what was probably Andy's progress to their booth behind her. "Oh, you work with Gwen? Why aren't you at work?"

Tosh's eyes glazed over in confusion. "What do you mean?"

He was beginning to frown and she knew they were entering dangerous territory. "Gwen rang me earlier, said she had to work late."

"She's with Owen," she blurted suddenly. She could feel herself blushing. "He's our doctor. Being as she's new, she gets all the crap jobs and he's behind on his inventory."

Rhys relaxed visibly, though there was still vague suspicion in his eyes. She suddenly understood Owen's derision when she talked about long-term relationships outside of Torchwood. This was what happened, the relentless lying on one side and the growing suspicion on the other. It was horrible.

Andy chose that moment to sit next to Thomas, completing the semicircle seating. He scowled deeply and she felt like it was a semi-permanent look for him. Rhys gestured at him. "This is Andy. He was Gwen's partner before she started working with you." At that comment, the skinny constable looked at her curiously and Tosh felt unsettled.

How had this happened? She was suddenly and inextricably a part of Gwen's life without the woman even knowing about it. In a way, it made her feel powerful, knowing how clueless the self-important woman really was. In other ways, it made her sick to her stomach, knowing that a complete stranger could insinuate themselves into Gwen's life while she was off shagging away her worry.

It was then that a memory hit her like a punch to the gut. Gwen had said with a good amount of certainty that she wouldn't stop. She'd tried to pad that blow with a compliment about how she'd glowed for the past few days. It was a lie, Tosh knew, something to make certain pains hurt less.

So she pushed down her urge to beat a quick retreat and drank with the guys until Rhys decided it was time to go home. It was well past midnight by that time but Tosh hadn't drank quite as much as the rest of them. She found a cab for Rhys and herself, instructing the driver to Rhys's flat before her own. She wouldn't have a problem with the fare.

Rhys laid his head on Tosh's shoulder and chuckled. "You're a good friend, you are."

She petted his soft hair idly. "I'm sure Gwen's better." The words felt wrong even as they spilled from her mouth.

His chuckling got louder and distinctively rude. "Gwen only thinks of 'erself. It's a bleeding pain sometimes. But I love 'er. So much." The more he drank, the more his Welsh accent seemed to come out.

Tosh felt her heart go out to the man. The cab stopped suddenly. "His stop," the driver declared roughly.

"You can make it up?"

Rhys fluttered a hand at her dismissively. "I'm fine."

On impulse, something occurred to Tosh, something utterly insane that would certainly get her in a large amount of awkwardness if she were found out. She took Rhys's phone from him and put her number in his contact list. "Here's my number. We can go drinking again sometime."

He frowned at her, his eyes narrowed uncertainly. "I don't know if that's a good idea."

She knew what he was getting at: Gwen. She merely winked at him in what she hoped was a conspiratorial manner. "She doesn't have to know. Just… I'm here. The job keeps us busy more often than not but I always have time for a friend."

His face melted into infinite softness. "Sure." With that, he made his way into the flat.

Tosh turned back to the driver and nodded, rattling off her own address. Now that she wasn't looking after Rhys, the buzz was beginning to feel unpleasant on her brain.

* * *

When she walked the Hub the next morning, Tosh was bloodshot and groggy from too little sleep and too much booze. She nodded half-heartedly at Ianto and made her way to her station, staring dumbly at her computer.

Laughter sounded from the autopsy bay and a wry smile appeared on Tosh's face at the sound. Her recent stint into Gwen's life and relationships seemed far away as the familiar depression settled over her. To stem its deadly tide, she started on one of her many projects, fueling her emotions in calculations and information.

As if on cue, her phone buzzed with a text message. She eyed the foreign number warily and opened the message, fingers poised strategically to battle an incoming virus. She visibly relaxed when she read the message before proceeding to save the number to her contacts.

"Lunch? Oriental Garden. - Rhys"

She sent a reply to the affirmative, grinning goofily. While she had felt like everyone that worked for Torchwood was her friend, the pendant had proved the opposite. The novelty of having a real friend that had nothing to do with aliens or the Rift was enough to stay her depression for a while.

Someone cleared their throat beside her and she jumped visibly. Turning, she found Jack smiling down at her. "You look like you had fun last night."

Toshiko arched an eyebrow and flipped the power to her monitor off to examine her reflection. "Correction, I look like someone ran me over and left me for dead."

He chuckled. "That text, was it from the lucky guy?"

She let it slide that he didn't press how bad she looked or vice versa. "No, just a friend wanting to have lunch."

Jack waggled his eyebrows. "Oh, really. Guy friend?"

She blushed slightly and made a dismissive gesture. "I need to get to work."

He smiled fondly at her and leaned down to kiss her temple. "Have fun at lunch, Tosh."

* * *

Lunchtime arrived more quickly than Tosh anticipated. After Jack left, she lost herself in reestablishing her translation program, tweaking some of the parameters so that it could finish at a faster pace. She didn't want what happened the other day with Gwen and Owen and their destructive effects on her computer to happen again.

She slipped out of the Hub, though not without catching a flash of a grin from Jack. The Oriental Garden was a brisk walk away, so she managed to find her way after a few minutes. She smiled at the interior softly, reminded idly of her mother.

"Can I help you?" a waiter asked almost as soon as she entered the establishment.

Toshiko focused on the Chinese-Japanese man that stood just above her own height, considering that she had settled for wearing flats today. She idly admitted to herself that he was cute and shook her head at his question. She scanned the booths to find Rhys drumming his fingers on a table not too far away. "I'm with him."

The waiter inclined his head and made a wide gesture, allowing her to precede him.

Once at the table, the waiter took her order of hot tea and left them to talk. Toshiko gazed at the Welsh man curiously. She really hadn't expected him to contact her at all. Last night had been pure impulse, some of which she already regretted. She was well aware that Rhys and Gwen had a good relationship, or at least a damned good façade of one.

Moments passed in which she just stared at the large man. He smiled pleasantly in return. "Did I do anything foolish last night?" he blurted suddenly in askance.

She chuckled softly, a weight lifting off her chest. With Gwen and Owen going at it like rabbits, she had started to think that something may have gone sour in her relationship with Rhys. As much as being used hurt her, being someone's rebound fling had the potential to hurt so much more. "Not really." She paused. "Thomas cut you off after you started ranting at Andy."

His smile broadened. "If that's all, then we're golden. I've ordered." He blushed slightly as the waiter appeared. "I hope you like sushi."

Toshiko deftly handled her chopsticks when the waiter placed the sashimi in front of her, eyeing Rhys carefully. They continued to talk around the food, mostly about trivial things like the weather and how the football teams were doing. She waited patiently, responding the best she could, until the real questions began.

"So…" Rhys began around a bit of his lo mein. "Torchwood?"

It didn't surprise her to find out that Gwen had told him the name of their group, though even that small piece of information could call for Retcon. What did surprise her was the hurt at the implications of such a question. Was that all she was to everyone? A shell of information?

The hurt must have shown on her face – she was rubbish at hiding her emotions – because he backpedaled very quickly. "No, I didn't… I mean to say that…" He stopped and sighed roughly, the frustration obvious on his face. "I don't want you to think I'm lying when I say you're my friend. Because I'm not."

Toshiko nodded. "Okay." Her face had relaxed, though there was a part of her that remained tense.

"I just want to know that she's safe. I don't care that she lies but it's getting out of hand."

Toshiko nodded. It made sense. Gwen and Rhys were a question away from being married and the rest of them were alone. "First of all, Torchwood is the highest level of classified you can get. I can't tell you anything sensitive." He nodded, his eyes wide as he took in her words. "We answer to Her Royal Highness and address all unidentified threats to the Crown." She knew she was quoting from the mission statement, hoping he wasn't too dense to understand.

"Unidentified…" He paused, an incredulous look passing over his face. "Are we talking aliens?"

She smiled, her eyes glittering. "I cannot confirm or deny that."

Rhys opened his mouth, obviously ready to argue a point, when his face changed. "You said 'threats'?"

The smile faded. "I'll tell you the truth. This job is very dangerous." She paused, looking him in the eye. "But she's safer with us than anywhere else."

He ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know what to think."

There was a muffled beep from within Toshiko's purse, revealed to be an alert on her Rift translation program. Another negative spike. She grimaced visibly.

"What?"

She jerked slightly at the sharp worry in his voice and wondered that she shouldn't have told him so much. Attempting an apologetic expression, she stood. "It's work. I have to leave."

He nodded but it was as if she were already gone. His eyes were glazed and his hands clenched as his tension obviously knotted further.

Why could nothing ever be simple?


	2. Gone To Site

**A/N: Boy, this is a long time between updates, yeah? Not too awfully long, I hope. One look at my profile will show that I write most Ranma 1/2 stuff, so that'll explain that. Hope everyone enjoys this chapter!**

* * *

Toshiko inhaled deeply, pasting a vaguely pleasant expression on her face, and stepped squarely on the lift. With a mechanical jerk, it began to descend and she glanced at her watch. She had only been gone for thirty minutes. More than likely, everyone was still out to lunch.

Sitting at her workstation, Toshiko glared at the negative spike alert on her screen. Not that any one of them would know or notice well enough to recognize the expression. Gwen and Owen constantly cast hungry looks at each other in what they probably considered to be a surreptitious manner. Jack and Ianto participated in a dance between themselves that somehow only involved their eyes.

It all made her want to scream.

Grabbing her coat and purse, she sent a quick message to Jack's computer. Protocol ordered that if you went out in the field alone, you had to wear one of the communication earpieces. Today was the first day Toshiko dared to ignore the rules.

'Code Amber. Gone to site. Tosh.' Code Amber was a negative spike, in honor of the American Amber Alert for missing children. She would take readings on the site, hoping to glean some new information to find out if there was a pattern from the places the Rift took people.

As she exited through the tourist office, she wondered how long it would take Jack to notice that she was gone.

* * *

In fact, Jack noticed Toshiko's absence as soon as he returned to the Hub. He idly wondered if she was having fun on her little lunch date. It was good to see her moving on after Mary but he thought she might be pushing herself a little much. She was a very introverted girl and he always felt her pain keenly.

"Where's Tosh?" Jack was halfway up to his office when he turned to smile at Ianto.

"I guess she's still out to lunch."

Ianto shook his head worriedly. His eyes had caught a couple of things that didn't go together. Tosh's computer was active, as if she had been there only a few minutes before, but all the com pieces were hanging on the wall. It would be unlike Toshiko took go anywhere significant without her earpiece, unlike her to ignore such a singular rule.

Meanwhile, Jack had continued to his office after giving the Welshman a wry smile that he didn't notice. It passed through his head that Ianto worried too much and that kind of stress wasn't healthy when he realized his computer was blinking rhythmically in a pattern he had convinced Toshiko to plug into his computer. It meant that he had received an intersystem message.

Without a second thought, he maneuvered around his desk and leaned over his keyboard, moving the mouse around to select the message. His eyes widening slowly, he read it several times to be sure before running out of his office quickly. Ianto was never one to miss something and he rarely seemed worried for their Asian employee, for she tended to follow protocol to the letter.

"Ianto!"

"Yes, sir?" The prim Welshman was a military salute away from clicking his heels together in some kind of alert gesture. However, now was not the time to think of him trussed up in uniform.

"Tosh has gone to a site. Is the weather still turning bad?"

Ianto nodded slowly and sighed heavily. Jack waited, knowing that the other man's professionalism would force him to say what was on his mind soon enough. "All the com units are here."

Over the course of an eternally slow second, Jack could feel his face growing slack and pale. Cardiff was due for a heavy downpour any minute and this was the time that Tosh had chosen to become rebellious, even if it was something as slight as forgetting a com unit. Pulling out his phone, he punched out a quick text message to his subordinate, informing her of the bad weather and urging her to return as soon as possible.

His heart dropped when his phone beeped dully not two seconds after he sent the message. Sliding his thumb across the screen, he barely managed to keep from either gasping in horror or crunching his phone in an angry fist. The message informed him that the receiver's device was turned off.

"Ianto, her phone's off too."

With a stiff nod, he turned to one of the workstations and immediately brought up the CCTV connection. He did some dragging and clicking for a few moments and then sat back, waiting tensely. It was long moments before the computer finally beeping, sharp shrill alarms that were designed to catch one's attention if Ianto and Jack weren't already on edge as they waited.

"She's not far. It looks like she's in South Cardiff at the bay, opposite the highway from the yacht club," Ianto told him, something in his voice making it wobble slightly. It was a definite left turn from his normal British butler professionalism. "The storm's already starting to hit there."

Glad that he'd yet to remove his coat, Jack moved toward the lift. He kept trying to remind himself that Tosh was a big girl, a big girl that was in for punishment for ignoring so much protocol in one day, but he couldn't help worrying. "Keep Gwen and Owen in line until I get back."

Ianto snorted at the very idea and looked up at his boss. "Jack?" It still surprised the immortal man exactly how much the Welshman could convey with a single word.

"If you're not here, they won't get any work done. And I don't even want to think what they would do in the autopsy bay if no one's here." He grinned cockily, trying to infuse the expression with as much confidence as he could muster. "Don't worry, Ianto. Everything will be fine."

Turning away, Jack mounted the lift and used his wrist device to command it to the surface. He could keep the worry from his face but that didn't mean it wasn't running rampant in his mind. Idly, he wondered what exactly had gone wrong at her lunch date to cause this type of erratic and irresponsible behavior.

* * *

Tosh shivered as the first drops of rain fell, cursing herself for the spontaneous decision to get away from the Hub. It hadn't been the first time the urge had struck her and it wouldn't be the last. She held up her phone, scowling at the black screen, and tapped it insistently with her index finger. It made no sign of returning to life, so she deposited it back into her jacket pocket. The damned thing had been glitching for days and she had been sure it would last at least another week before she had to requisition another but it looked like the proximity to recent Rift activity was the last straw for this particular piece of technology.

Squinting her eyes in irritation, she looked up at the gray sky, her sour expression deepening. From the look of the clouds, the rain would be quite heavy soon. She cast a yearning look at the SUV parked just off the edge of the road a few meters away and sighed, squaring her shoulders. She came out here to do her job, the lack of a com and her dead phone notwithstanding, and that was exactly what she would do.

Hefting the medium-sized backpack that Owen often referred to as Tosh's Techie Bag (mostly with heavy amounts of snark), Toshiko lifted a small device from the side pocket and rested the bag on her back. This device was something like a magnet for Rift activity. She had spent four years studying the Rift and it had taken the better part of six months to create this device. As she adjusted a dial on the side with a minute movement, she was reminded of the time Owen's brutish hands had nearly caused it to implode and her to have a conniption that reduced her to a puddle of technical jargon.

How that man could be an artist with a scalpel but an utter mess with absolutely everything else was beyond her.

The device beeped twice and her lips curved into a smile. "This must be the place," she murmured to herself as she turned the device off and slid it back into the bag. She set down the bag gently and pulled out a large brick of a machine as well as a notepad and a pen. She looked to the sky again, her brown eyes straining to see the reach of the Rift itself, before settling down to scan the area.

The screen of the machine filled with lines of code that her mind translated automatically, her hand jotting pertinent notes on the paper in front of her. Though the information that she saw in front of her was no doubt interesting, it was almost useless. The more she looked at the findings and reflected on the various negative spike sites she'd been to over the years, the more she realized she would need decades of data to truly unlock this mystery, decades that the Torchwood lifestyle was unlikely to give her. It was all well and good that Jack had a facility for them after they returned but that wouldn't stop the Rift from taking them.

Why did the Rift take this person and not that one? From one location and not from another half a mile away? As far as she could tell, she was the one person to make the most sense of the Rift in the one hundred years since its presence had been discovered but she was always finding new things, new complications for which contingency plans had to be updated and changed or altogether scrapped at times.

When she felt the sharp edges of the machine bite into the skin of her hands, Tosh realized she had been tightening her fingers, painfully so, and forced herself to relax. Watching the code finish through the sheen of water that now covered the screen, she turned off the device and stowed it back in the bag. Her notes were smudged and nearly illegible with the efforts of the rain but she could always go back over it later, she decided, and slid the notepad into the bag as well. The sound of the zipper closing sounded loud in her ears and then there was nothing, nothing but the sound of rain and lapping waves and her own thoughts.

She rubbed her upper arms idly, an old habit from her time in the UNIT cell that usually signified heavy anxiety. Gazing out toward the water, her eyes unseeing, she thought back to that which was really bothering her – her conversation with Rhys barely thirty minutes ago. In a way, she knew that he was telling the truth about wanting to be her friend and she would never be able to convey to someone how much she wanted that. A friend – clear-cut and simple – but it had always been the one thing she could never have. Even before the terrorists and her time with UNIT, she had been quiet and withdrawn, careful not to intrude on anyone too completely. (Her time with UNIT had only made this particular trait so much worse, on more levels than she cared to think about.)

However, now there would always be the thought that Rhys would be around her as an extra tie to Gwen. After all, she had likely been more up-front and truthful in that short conversation than the Welshwoman had been in the past two months. Toshiko wasn't afraid of Torchwood or Jack anymore, hadn't been since the first six months of her employment. As it was, she was nothing outside of her work. She could wither away to death and no one would be the wiser.

All she wanted… all she'd ever wanted was someone that truly cared about her.

"Tosh!"

Turning with a small level of surprise, she saw Jack standing next to her SUV. Blinking hard, she realized there was another vehicle there, one identical to the one she'd arrived in. She furrowed her brow slightly, feeling somehow muddled and weak. Shouldn't she have noticed Jack's SUV immediately? Now that she wasn't deep in thought, she realized she felt very cold and wet and there was something like cloth coming between her and the rest of her immediate thoughts.

Shaking her head to clear the cobwebs, she swept an arm down to grab her bag and stepped forward at the same time. Something somewhere in the electrical impulses got crossed because suddenly the ground was coming at her faster than she liked. She tried to order her arms out to cushion the fall but that didn't work either. As a result, she felt the sharp pain of her forehead coming in contact with a less-than-rounded rock rather keenly.

_What a perfect ending to this day,_ she thought as she finally felt the weakness deep in her bones that had been trying to claim her attention through her thoughts and memories.

"Toshiko!" Jack cried out in alarm. And that was the last thing she heard before the black claimed her.

* * *

"Why are you in charge?" Ianto quirked an eyebrow at Owen's tone but didn't think anything of it. A glance in Gwen's direction told him that she was actually mad, though. Interesting… Did she actually fancy herself to be above those that had been a part of Torchwood for years, even if his time with Torchwood Three was somewhat less than that of Owen and Tosh?

"Because I was here when Jack went out on a call and he remarked on his concern of what the two of you might do in the autopsy bay if left unattended," he told them in an unremarkable tone. It was like fresh rain over the wound of his intense worry for Toshiko when Owen's eyes widened comically and Gwen spluttered and blushed hard.

"Where's Tosh?" Owen asked idly. "Not back from her lunch date yet?"

Ianto frowned. Jack had told him about the Asian woman's lunch plans with an unknown male but he honestly didn't think the doctor paid enough attention to her to realize she'd gone out for lunch, which was somewhat unusual for her. Before he could ask him, however, Gwen looked at Owen in confusion. "What lunch date?"

The snarky doctor grinned at her. "Oh, didn't you notice? Tosh went out for lunch even though she usually works through and has Tea Boy fetch her something." Ianto admitted silently that that was true; he had no problem fetching things for Toshiko – she didn't induce the feelings of awkward lust that Jack caused or subdued animosity that both Owen and Gwen tended to spark in him.

Gwen seemed kind of taken aback, though. "Really? I've… Well, I guess I've never noticed."

Ianto's eyebrow quirked again. This was the woman that broke Retcon because she remembered a murder weapon in Suzie's pile of tools? How exceedingly pathetic. He remained quiet when Owen's attention turned back to him, obviously expected him to answer the original question, the one about Toshiko's whereabouts. Just because he knew didn't mean he had to say; more specifically, because he had endured twenty minutes of perfect silence between the time Jack left and the arrival of his coworkers, it merely meant his boss should be returning with Toshiko quite soon.

"Do you really think she's still out?" Gwen asked then. "It doesn't seem like Tosh to take a long lunch or to be late… ever." Ianto barely kept his eyes from narrowing at the former constable. Aside from her early attempts at easing her way with the quiet woman, what did Gwen believe she actually knew about Toshiko Sato?

At the very moment, before his anger could begin to consume his worry, the mechanical sound of the lift alerted him to Jack's return. Feeling the worry fill up his gut again, he sighed heavily and craned his neck in order to watch the descent.

"Something's wrong," Owen said suddenly with conviction. "Ianto, what happened?"

Jack was within sight now and Ianto's eyes widened minimally when he saw that he was carrying Toshiko in his arms. His brow furrowed and he tilted his head, the silent question for Jack alone. The immortal man inclined his head once, though the frown that pulled at his face only worried the Welshman further.

"Toshiko went to site alone, without a com unit and her phone turned off," Ianto told him finally. "Because the weather was turning bad, Jack went out to get her." He glanced at the man in question again. "I'm not sure about anything else."

Owen rushed over to Jack, transferring the woman easily into his arms, and then transported her to the autopsy bay, which was now for all intents and purposes a medical bay. He hurriedly went through the process of checking her pulse and breathing before drawing blood, his movements professional and steady but something in his eyes almost… unnerved.

"I checked her phone," Jack said to Ianto softly. "It won't turn on. I think she's been due for a replacement for a while." Ianto nodded, explaining something that would have been just a bit more off than the tiny rebellion of not taking a com unit to site. "She was just staring out into the bay when I got there." He sounded very worried but then again, he got like that any time one of them was injured or sick. His immortality had made him achingly aware of the fragility of human life.

"Then what?" Ianto murmured, his eyes keeping a close eye on Owen's ministrations. When she woke, Toshiko would go to him, blushing and hoping to heaven that nothing untoward had occurred.

"She looked at me and… fainted. Maybe she caught a chill?" Jack looked at Ianto, searching his face, and the Welshman nodded, thinking that was the most likely culprit. "Whatever happened at lunch today, it couldn't have been good to make her do something like this."

"It isn't her fault that the weather turned bad and she caught something," Ianto reminded his boss gently.

Jack harrumphed softly. "Well, she's not going to be happy about Owen examining her," he remarked, trying and failing to throw a jaunty tone into his voice.

Quirking an eyebrow, he looked over at Jack. "Why not?"

The immortal leaned forward, laying his arms over the railing and resting his chin on his forearms. "He hasn't seen her scars."

Ianto said nothing in return but knowing that the worry had returned full force to fill his eyes. _What scars?_ he thought helplessly.


	3. Battle Scars

**A/N: Egads! Another update? So soon? The world is ending! Run for your lives! *snort* I'm a dork. Hope everyone enjoys this!**

* * *

Owen Harper was a magnificent doctor. That fact was rarely ever in question. His status as a human being… Well, that was another issue altogether. Personally, he figured his time with Torchwood and saving the world on at least a weekly basis had to balance out how much of a miserable git he was the rest of the time. After all, not many people knew why he was cloaked in the snarky attitude.

Not even Gwen, the coworkers he was shagging on a regular basis, knew that Owen the Jerk was just a front. But, somehow, Tosh did.

He frowned down at the still form of his friend on the cold metal slab that usually held alien corpses. It was more of a similarity than he liked and he forced his mind back to the task at hand: figuring out exactly what was wrong. Her pulse was steady and rapid but her breathing was labored, her chest randomly heaving in an attempt to pull in a large breath. Her pale skin seemed ashen, though her temperature itself was above normal, and her wet clothes clung to her skin like a leech.

He twitched very slightly before slapping himself on the forehead. "Oi! Does Tosh have another set of clothes here?" He turned to gaze to the two men that watched his progress and was slightly relieved when Ianto nodded once and disappeared to wherever it was he went when he handled things.

"Do you know what's wrong?" Gwen asked softly. Owen twitched his gaze over to her, noting she seemed genuinely concerned despite her tendency to overlook Toshiko much of the time. "Why hasn't she woken up?"

His gaze returned to Jack to find the man gazing down at the techie girl in intense worry. "I think it's pneumonia again," Owen said in a thoughtful voice.

Jack nodded once and pressed his lips together but Gwen continued the questioning. "Again?" she echoed.

Owen thought back in an instance a couple years past when Toshiko had gone out for him yet again when he'd been much too hungover to be of much use. It had been deep in winter at the time and the fact of her huddling in a blanket the following day as she worked through one of her various ongoing projects had caught his attention. "She caught pneumonia when she was little. If you had a brain in your head, you would know that the body generally becomes more susceptible to it after the first time."

Gwen scowled at him, to which he merely grinned and turned his back on her. He would need to test Tosh's blood to be sure but he was relatively certain of his diagnosis. Now, they needed to rid her of the wet clothes and put her on a banana bag until she woke. Which begged the question: did they actually have IV fluids?

"Here we go," Ianto announced as he came back into view, carrying a bundle as he descended to the autopsy bay. "I'll take her to the showers and get her changed."

Owen immediately extended an arm over his patient, arching a suspicious eyebrow at the man. "Hey, now. I'm the doctor here."

Ianto's eyes narrowed very slightly. "She'll be embarrassed if you do it."

"I'm a professional right now," he told him, clearly enunciating the words. "Besides, she'll need a warm shower as well to help take away the chill. Would you have thought of that, Tea Boy?"

"Of course I would," Ianto rejoined, clutching the bundle of clothes closer to his chest.

"Ianto, let Owen do it," Jack commanded in a soft tone. The Welshman looked up at his boss, his eyes wide. "He's right. He is the doctor and this is something that falls into his purview."

Even Owen could tell he was trying to pull something, though the dark-haired doctor couldn't figure out what that was for the life of him. Instead, he settled for smirking smugly at Ianto and hefting Toshiko into his arms again. An idle thought flitted across his brain, wondering if her choice bits were as frumpy as her clothing or if she was hiding something a bit more desirable under her conservative attire. However, he immediately batted the thought away, knowing he deserved a sound smack for it.

Of course, that brought his mind around to the reason he was angry at the woman in his arms. After all, hadn't she possessed something that allowed her entrance to their deepest thoughts? It was degrading and appalling and made his gums itch with misplaced anger. Deep down, below the professionalism and the jerky remarks and the nonchalant disdain, Owen knew that he cared what people thought of him. Especially Toshiko, for some reason.

The events of the day before had caused him to be hyperaware of his own thoughts, something that was completely out of character for him. After all, he outwardly was the type of person to voice his thoughts immediately, making it seem as if there was no filter between his mouth and his brain. It irked him that now Toshiko, the one person who seemed determined to be consistently nice to him, was also the one person that knew how much of a pit his mind really was.

However, before he could become too ensnared by the familiar anger and disgust, Owen reminded himself that he had a job to do, preferably before the Asian woman's condition became too serious. He turned on one of the showerheads until it was warm enough to chase away Toshiko's lingering chill but not so hot that it would scald. Sure that the raining water was the correct temperature, he stood under it, handling Toshiko carefully as he began to remove her clothing. Soon, every article of clothing – from her sodden jumper to the dark tights that she wore under her slacks – laid in a discomfited heap, the rainwater that had soaked them slowly leaking from the clothes into a nearby drain.

It was then that Owen finally noticed the thing that Jack had been waiting for: the scars. Most of them were faded to thin lines on her arms and legs but there were three distinct ones that worried the doctor, scars that he knew would never truly fade. The first was a circle of mottled scar tissue in the center of her back directly between her shoulder blades. It was an inch in diameter and had the look of healed cigarette burns. Oh, but the healed wound was deep; whoever had done this to her had done it several times, reopening the same wound often. The second was a distinctly sexual wound but one Owen was sure Toshiko hadn't liked. It was a deep bite mark, so deep that he knew that it had either been a perfect recurrence on several occasions or a singular wound that would have caused enough blood loss to threaten her life. The last scar was on her waistline and he knew it was a single occurrence. It was a brand, faded now but a long series of numbers that stretched from her right hip to directly below her navel.

Forgetting for a moment that he was treating a coworker, Owen stared at the numbers melted into her skin, trying to fit this puzzle into what he knew about Toshiko Sato. The truth of the situation took him a moment to grasp. Yes, Tosh had covered for him many times and they had had some fun times outside of work, though nothing too remarkable, but what did he know about her personally? Every fact he could tell someone about her had something to do with Torchwood: that she was a miracle worker with technology that should, by all rights, be well beyond her; that she was especially touchy if you ruined one of her precious projects; that she had always seemed unduly suspicious of Suzie and her obsessions; that Jack seemed to favor her, despite his obvious attachment to the Tea Boy. The list could go on but he knew nothing of her past, of her family, not even if she preferred Asian cuisine over the sometimes abominable British fare.

Where had these scars come from?

* * *

She was back in that small, cramped space. Though her surroundings were obviously of concrete, her brain always thought of it as stone, the wet and cold stone of dungeons of old. After all, she was nothing but a nameless prisoner. Her mind was locked safely away, though it was not entirely free of those times, the times when the guards took out their more sadistic emotions on the prisoners.

Toshiko was keenly aware that no matter how much pain she endured, two things were true. One, there could be someone just a few cells over that was getting it so much worse and two, no matter how much she wished to wail at her own fate, it would just continue the next day, without end. Her time here, though she had long lost her grasp of the actual passage of time, had led her to accept the pain, to accept the sexual degradation, the malicious beatings, and the actions of a person that in another life would have hidden this true, twisted face that she saw every day.

There were days, of course, when she cursed the skies and her guards and the very events that had led to her capture. If the terrorists had never kidnapped her mother, if her family hadn't been the most important thing to her, if she had never taken that job to begin with… So many ifs, so many possibilities that could have kept out of this cell. Of course, though, if any one of those things hadn't happened, Jack would never have found her and she would never have joined Torchwood.

_Torchwood,_ Toshiko thought then. _That's right. I don't live in this cell anymore._

Even as she made the realization, she crested to the surface of her own nightmare, breaking through the bubble of her own consciousness. She could feel water falling on her skin and arms clutching her body. It was odd how intimate it felt. She must have only lost consciousness for a moment. She was probably still at the bay and Jack was holding her. It wasn't until she opened her eyes that she realized exactly how wrong she was.

Owen's face and small, brown eyes looked at her in concern. And from the feel of his hands, she was utterly naked.

With an effort that made her feel like a weight of lead and her head spin like a dervish, Toshiko whirled away from the man, feeling only slightly comforted when her back hit the cold tile hard. She closed her eyes, wishing with all her might that this was not happening, that she was not completely nude in front of the one man her heart longed for.

Opening her eyes, she sighed heavily. No such luck.

"What the hell!?" she screeched loudly, her wailing voice reaching an extremely high pitch. She didn't have the presence of mind to figure out this situation, just knowing that all her dignity had gone the way of her clothes. After a moment, though, her knees buckles and she swayed to the floor under the weight of her pounding skull and a heavy pressure on her chest. "Ohh," she moaned softly, pressing her head farther down to the tile near the drain.

Her mind slid the pieces together at blinding speed even as the threatening pneumonia in her lungs left her trembling on her hands and knees, naked as the day she was born. She'd fainted out at the bay, that much was obvious, and it seemed she'd been out in the cold rain far longer than she'd realized. Combined with the dehydration resulting from last night's pub crawl and the malnutrition stemming from only having had two bites of sashimi in the past thirty-six hours for sustenance, her immune system had failed just enough to allow the fifth attack of bacterial pneumonia she'd endured in her entire life. This scene in the showers was just Owen doing his job, being her doctor.

The water that had been cascading down her back shut off then and she was covered with something large and fluffy and dry. Though she wanted nothing more to roll onto her side and wait for the shaking to pass, she forced herself to her feet, finally looking up at Owen again. Something in his eyes flickered back at her, something exceedingly sad, something that made her quite angry.

"You saw," she bit out even as another shudder gripped her frame.

He frowned deeply, a scowl threatening to cover his face. However, memory obviously hit him again because his face twisted back into searching blankness. "What happened to you?" He said it with so much curiosity and so much pity that Tosh snapped.

She glared at him, feeling equal parts violated and crushed. "We all have parts of our past that we wish had never happened." She then turned away from her, feeling her ire fade as her keen eyes searched the room. There! A change of clothes laid in a careless pile near the doorway. She scampered to them and away from Owen, hurrying in an effort to dress herself before he caught the meaning of her words.

It was true that Toshiko knew about Katie and the alien that had plagued her brain for months. After all, hadn't she been the one to do the search when Jack determined that the creatures presented in humans as a progressively degenerative mental disorder, usually something similar to Alzheimer's? Hadn't she found that Katie Russell, Owen's then-fiancée, had been the most likely victim? Hadn't she performed the extensive background check on Owen Harper himself before Jack finally recruited him?

"The pendant," Owen said in a dull voice. "You know because of the pendant. You should never have worn it!" The longer he spoke, the more emotional and raw his voice sounded, yelling at her but maintaining his distance.

Dressing in a dark tank top and thin yoga pants, Toshiko frowned down at herself. This could hardly be called clothing. She tossed a glance around, ignoring Owen for the moment, and brightened slightly when she noticed Ianto in the corridor beyond the doorway, holding one of her faded purple jumpers. Not wanting to deal with an emotional encounter with her body so weak, she stepped out into the hallway and took the item from Ianto, frowning yet again when her body shook.

"Where are you going?" Owen demanded, finally taking long strides to Toshiko. Hearing the determined footsteps caused her to freeze in place, darting frightened eyes at the tall Welshman in front of her. "Tell me exactly what you know."

"She knows everything." Toshiko turned to see that Jack had stopped Owen and she breathed a sigh of relief. She just wanted to go home and have a long nap with nice dreams, hopefully one in which cramped cells and furious doctors did not play a part. Jack turned to look at her. "I'll tell him, okay?"

"Jack…" she started, feeling the deep desire to keep that part of her life shrouded in secret. "I don't think—"

The immortal man interrupted her immediately. "You've known about her all this time," he told her firmly. "Don't you think he should know about this?" She pressed her lips together, her dark eyes brooding with memory, and rubbed at her upper arms. Finally, she nodded her assent. "It'll be fine," he said then, his face and voice infinitely soft, telling her he had noticed how anxious the idea made her. Finally, he turned to Ianto. "Take her home. Make sure she eats."

Ianto nodded firmly and led them both out of the Hub. On the way, Tosh noticed Gwen's hesitant smile – had she been worried? – but took some silent pleasure in the confusion swimming in the other woman's eyes. Torchwood was full of secrets and not just alien-related secrets, but also the deep and dark things about the employees themselves that should never have to see the light of day.

After they settled into his personal car, the broad Welshman turned to her, concern swimming in his eyes. "Jack said you have scars?" He lilted his tone at the end to turn the statement into a question.

Toshiko smirked wryly. She had a feeling that some part of this was Jack's doing but of course, she couldn't blame it all on him – her frail immune system had certainly played a part. "You know that UNIT imprisoned me?" she asked.

Ianto nodded. "It's in your file. 'UNIT imprisonment, six months.' Your designation is blacked out, though."

She closed her eyes, thinking of the long number that would forever be burned into her mind and flesh. "Let's just say that the guards were not pleasant and leave it at that."

He nodded again, accepting her wish to keep the memories private, and started the vehicle. "Just remember – I'm here if you need to talk, okay?" Toshiko nodded but kept silent, a smile quirking at her lips. Maybe she wasn't quite as alone as she liked to believe.


End file.
